Originally published at: In this video, a man demonstrates an antique arcade shocker machine | Boing Boing
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People would pay to get shocked!!
I lived in Ensenada for a year in 1973. There was a thing at the bars in which manly men would shock each other with dry cells and tube radio output transformers, as a measure of their level of macho.
This naturally made its way to the Catholic grade school I attended.
I wired up a fist-sized 120V to 6V tube filament transformer’s 6V winding to a tiny AA cell with a pushbutton trigger switch, and brought it to school one day. The kids that tried it reported that it was much more powerful than the ones they’re been working with. Even the tough kids couldn’t take it.
I never subjected myself to its shock, being a wussy.
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Add a video game and this sounds like a side-plot of a James Bond movie. /s
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Having been once electrocuted, no thanks. Plus “code brown” happens when you are subjected to electrocution…
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A relay, with the coil wired through the normally closed contacts, so that as the coil energizes, it breaks the connection, can give a continuous buzz.
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I don’t remember these, but sibs remember fluoroscopes in shoe stores that were supposed to give your feet the best shoes for their confirmation…
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Not Disneyland, but WDW in Florida also had them in an old-town penny arcade setting, in '78 and '79 (my only trips there). At the time, they were using real electricity.
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Yes, but if the transformer is big enough, a single pulse will result in sufficient aversion therapy.
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Apply same methodology to many 21st century things.
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My favorite was the van de Graff generator in my grade-school science classroom. That thing could kick out foot-long sparks.
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I remember seeing those in the 70s when I was a kid, it might have been at Disneyland. It had 2 upright metal handles like immobile joysticks to grab, and gave a continuous charge. I liked it! I think they used to have one at the Musée Mechanique in San Francisco, not sure if it’s still there.
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I seem to remember seeing one in a Clarke’s shoe shop when I was a kid. However, I might have been misremembering it, and confusing it with a scene in a Harry Palmer film (maybe the Billion Dollar Brain); where a shoe shop fluoroscope is used to x-ray a parcel.
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Wasn’t this rather dangerous since your heart is mid-circuit?
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Hence the “one hand in your pocket” rule when you expose yourself to the “potential” of current flow. That said, I have tried these machines; the one I recall is like @DizBuster describes, two upright handles. I thought they actually squeezed together on “mine” though. Better than paying a machine to hit you in the head with a hammer, I guess
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Not the 'shocker" I was expecting.
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As a youngster I was always fascinated by radio and played around and pulled to bits many valve sets. Over the years I had a plenty of mains powered shocks (240 volt over here) but I think the worst shock I ever had was from a valve radio which was mains/battery powered - but when dry-cell battery powered it used a gadget (I think it was called a vibrator) to simulate alternating current in a circuit which went through a very big capacitor. I was sure I had unplugged the thing but when I had the back of it I got a massive jolt. I understand that the big high tension capacitors used on the old cathode ray TV sets also had enough charge to kill you and remain dangerous even when unplugged for years - until that capacitor discharges - preferably not into you.
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i grew up in NYC and on jaunts down to Chinatown with my friends we saw tourists flocking around the machine called the Dancing Chicken. it was basically a shock machine, and a live chicken would be in a glass box, standing on wire mesh. when someone would drop a quarter in, a circuit was completed and the chicken would hop around trying to get off the mesh. i thought it was a horrible sight to see the chicken tortured this way, even for just a few seconds. tourists loved it though. sigh.
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If I remember correctly, the one at Disneyland had text at the top that said something like “Electricity: The Silent Physician”. LOVED getting shocked just before leaving every visit.
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I think we could bring these back with a TikTok challenge.
I’ve wanted this fictional game ever since I saw the film.
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